Meghan McLennan, Hind Sbihi : Swish, Gargle and Spit - Implementing and Evaluating Saline Gargle for School-aged Children in BC

As COVID raced across the world in March and April, global supply chains faltered. The short-comings of “just in time” delivery systems were exposed and supplies critical for COVID testing were rapidly depleted. NP swabs were no exception – how do you test for COVID without NP swabs? BCCDC PHL and C&W Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine searched for alternatives. Full re-opening of schools would lead to an increased demand for testing K – 12 students – a process that could be traumatic for the children, parents and collection centre staff. This is the story of the evolution, evaluation and implementation of the saline gargle (SG) for K-12 in BC as well as the reporting on its performance (e.g. positivity rates, testing volumes). Further, we demonstrate that NP and SG testing results characterize two distinct populations, possibly reflective of disease severity or inability to collect SG samples. Other team members: David Goldfarb, Yayuk Joffres, Chris Fjell, Troy Grennan, Heather Pederson, Libby Brown, Heather Amos, Esther Tong, Trisha Thomson, Christy Hay, Karen Mooder, Geoffrey Ford, Blake Gilks, Linda Hoang

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10/13/2020 5:50:00 PM